Episode 20: URMIA Camps Insurance

Are your institution’s academic, sports, and virtual camps for minors adequately insured? Join host Jenny Whittington and her guest, A.J. Morgan, to learn more about the URMIA Camps Insurance Program administered by RPS Bollinger Sports & Leisure, a division of Gallagher. This special insurance program is available as a benefit for URMIA member colleges and universities to help provide broad coverage for camp liabilities, including sexual abuse and molestation, camp staff auto accidents, and more.

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Transcript

Jenny: Hello everyone, welcome to URMIAmatters. This is Jenny Whittington, URMIAs Executive Director, and I’m here today with another special guest, AJ Morgan, and he is the Area President of RPS Bollinger Sports and Leisure, and he is the man in charge of the URMIA Camps program. So welcome to the program, AJ!

AJ: Thank you very much, Jenny. I’m happy to be here.

Jenny: Terrific. So I love to start things off just by having my guests to URMIAmatters just give a little bit of background about themselves, and I familiarized myself with your background, and it was pretty interesting, you athletic experience and so just tell us a little bit about your career and how you got involved with the URMIA Camps program.

AJ: Ok, well I got into the insurance business 19 years ago so I have an anniversary coming up if I can make it that long, just one short more year. What at the time was Bollinger Insurance, and we had a sports program and I came in on the production side. Prior to that I was a high school english teacher and basketball coach, so my heart is in the education side of the world and so when the URMIA Camp program presented itself through a connection with Gallagher education practice, I certainly was excited. Anytime I have any link to ongoing academics I’m very excited, so my relationship with URMIA started in that way, there was a solution, a need for solving on-campus athletic camps and insuring them properly with the right coverages and we were able to step up and set this program up about 2 years ago with you, Jenny, so thank you for that, and I think it’s grown nicely.  Of course now we’ve hit a little bit of a bump in the road with a pandemic that we’re all trying to get through so, that is a winding introduction of myself. 

Jenny: Well, thank you for that and congratulations on almost your 20 year anniversary, I am confident you will make it. So tell me a little bit about Bollinger, I don’t know much about that company’s history and where you’re located. 

AJ: So we’re located in New Jersey. We started over 60 years ago and academics and athletics were at the heart. At the very beginning we were a student accident insurer and our relationship with athletics started with USA softball. We still have a student accident program and we still are the insurer for USA softball. So, it’s quite remarkable, and I walked into that relationship 19 years ago, so great history and we were purchased by Gallagher in 2013 and our sports division piece was put under RPS, risk placement services, which is owned by Gallagher. 

Jenny: Wow, what a history. That’s pretty impressive. The longevity of that relationship is pretty cool. So, in my years with URMIA, I started quite a long time ago in 2005, and URMIA had a Tulip program at that time and I think a few years after that we launched a Camps program that was kind of related to our Tulip program, and then when you guys came along we really revitalized our Camps program, and really took advantage of the product that you guys had in place, so we have grown it over time and we will get through this unprecedented time and Camps will resume to their normalcy one day, knock on wood, but when we launched the Camps program, as you alluded to, we launched it specifically as a sports camps program and that’s where the bulk of the camps program is, but will you talk about how you let it some of the academic camps? 

AJ: Oh, absolutely. We understood from the start that we would probably entertain some of the more benign academic camps under the program, and because it is usually, underlining usually, more dangerous to get on, say the soccer field, than it is to come into the classroom and take some classes, but as was pointed out to me on our last call, Jenny, STEM programs with chemistry and chemicals, and things like that can present its own risks and exposures, but we believe that our program is properly priced to handle that, and so therefore we expanded from marketing it as just sports to now a generic camps title to include those academic camps and some social kind of camps that may take place on campus. 

Jenny: I know we just featured an article in URMIA insights, our member newsletter, I know that we had some back and forth about asking questions specifically about COVID, so I’d like to talk about those a little bit. I know that some camps are carrying on and other camps aren’t, but I know that you shared with us that you’ve been getting a lot of calls, a lot of inquiries about the coverage, so will you speak to that a little bit, about the coverage for virtual practices?

AJ: When we first started receiving requests about virtual coverage for camps, it was kind of expected because you can’t stop sports in the world, and we don’t want to stop sports in the world, so we went to the carriers and asked them “hey, can you take a look at these requests for virtual coverage?” and of course, in analyzing the risk, I feel like it’s pretty hard to have contact virtually, so we feel like the risk is reduced when it’s virtual. Obviously we want some live supervised connection to that so the kids just aren’t out there playing sports on their own without the supervision, but we think coaches are doing the best they can and of course we are in a modern technological world, so it’s not as if no one’s ever looked at a video and been instructed that way. It seemed like a natural progression during COVID-19, so we do cover the virtual camp as long as it’s live and supervised in the URMIA Camps program.

Jenny: Okay, have you had to change the form or anything, or are you just doing this case by case?

AJ: We are trying to address the form so we can broadly get the coverage necessary so it’s stated in there because it hadn’t been addressed before, and anytime you don’t have stated coverage in a policy, you do worry a little bit about a claim not being covered because it’s not stated coverage, but we certainly now have a trial question and answer on this, and so we’re developing a form that will address this.

Jenny: Terrific. I do remember back from the early days of when we launched Camps and maybe when we came to Bollinger a few years back, on of the great things about the policy was the sexual abuse and molestation coverage that you guys have, I know this is for in-person camps that most likely aren’t, a lot of them happening this summer, but can you talk to the policy limits and the coverage of the Camps program, because I know that’s always really important to the risk managers when they’re looking for coverage. 

AJ: Absolutely. I mean just stepping back and looking at the genesis and the policy, the heart and soul of sports, especially liability coverage, is that we cover lawsuits coming from an injured athlete or someone, let's say they’re at a sleepaway camp and they’re not on the field but something happens in the dorm and god forbid you have an abuse molestation situation. All these things have to be contemplated, so we work with URMIA, we work with you of course, Jenny, on setting those limits and we built a 2 million dollar limit that includes the participant legal liability, which is the heart of any sports coverage, and then the abuse molestation limit we built in as a 1 mil limit, which is high in the world today as we’ve seen those coverage limits shrink in a lot of programs, so we think it’s an important coverage and obviously there have been situations on campuses and in national governing bodies where this is a very real problem and it’s a very necessary protection, so that’s basically the reason that we exist as a sports program is to cover for lawsuits that almost every other insurance policy is excluding. 

Jenny: That’s great, and I know that’s exactly why URMIA wanted both the Tulip program and the Camps program was to kind of fill that niche. Now, I also remember, I was always kind of confused about the optional hired/non owned auto liability. I believe that’s an optional coverage, right, that people can add or not add. Now, is that for when counselors, or when they are moving campers from site to site? Can you speak to that a little bit?

AJ: Yes. It’s really not to cover when you’re moving campers around. It’s really to cover when you are driving on behalf of your camp, you know, errands are run. You run out to get the gatorade or the ice, or you run… Most of the camps that take place are on campus and you’re hopefully not having to transport kids very far, I know that happens, but the real reason for the coverage is for the people in the other car, and these are non owned or hired, non owned from the perspective of the college or the camp, right. They’re either rentals or they're not owned, they’re personal autos. So when you have a counselor running out on behalf of the camp to do something, that is non owned in the eyes of the camp, and the college or university and therefore the camp doesn’t have any auto insurance, so if someone chooses to sue the camp for that incident, this is the coverage that responds, so it’s in absence of what most businesses have if they have autos:  auto policies, but sports organizations rarely have auto policies.

Jenny: Thank you, I knew I was confused about that, thank you for setting me straight. I know when we kicked off the Camps program with you a few years back, you really bulked up the risk management part of the site with all those different guides, now do you recommend, like I see here on the website the aquatic safety guide, the concussion safety, crisis management, do you speak to those when you’re working with the buyer of the camps? Do you recommend people use these? 

AJ: Oh, absolutely. That’s part of our partnership URMIA. Obviously, we are representing on this policy, we feel we represent the risk managers policy, right. We had a team of people looking at coverages and where we’re going to line up on limits and coverages, and so we want to provide proper risk management materials for the folks who use, who buy into our camp program and run these camps. So 100%, absolutely they’re there to be used and we refer people to them all the time. 

Jenny: Great, and then as I peruse your lovely Camps site, I see the FAQ, which just makes me wonder, what is the most commonly asked question that you get from a normal Camps purchaser? 

AJ: Well, I wish you’d asked me ahead of time so I could think “what is the most common question?”. Well, the most common question we get in our sports program and probably with regard to the URMIA program as well is “Can I be sued for (fill in the blank)”, and that’s really not a coverage question, that is a state of the United States question, and the answer is: absolutely. You can, because if a lawyer can back it up, you can be sued for it, and therefore that makes our liability insurance all the more important. I mean, people want reassurance that even in the world where you get some crazy lawsuits, they want to make sure that their coverage is going to respond to it, so I would say that’s our number one question.

Jenny: Yeah, that totally makes sense and I mean, obviously the people purchasing the coverage… Is the most typical coverage the coach, in general?

AJ: Yes.

Jenny: Yeah,  I mean their experience with insurance and risk management, although a lot of it is common sense and they do it all the time, insurance can be a very complicated topic, or so I’ve learned a lot over the last 15 years.

AJ: Absolutely. One thing we love about the fact that coaches are calling to ask questions, is the coaches understand implementation of rules and, you know obviously they run practices, they run camps, so they’re organized. For the most part when they ask questions, they’re clear, and when they get answers they’re very happy, so that’s what we try to do. Not every question for every scenario can be answered, and this current pandemic is proof of that because we don’t even know what scenarios are coming down the road, but we work very hard in a normal… to make sure that what we can expect from a sports program is covered. 

Jenny: Well, coming from you as a coach yourself, that makes sense that you kind of speak their language, and I do want to just talk for a moment and I’ve often been praised about your timeliness and your getting back to people. If people have questions about Camps, is the best way to email you or call you guys, and is it you and do you have other staff that help support the Camps program? 

AJ: Oh, absolutely. Caroline Buttelman is my right arm on the Camps program, on the URMIA program. She is the engine that makes it run. We love email questions because then we can answer in writing, you know phone calls can be… and you can hear it during this interview, a little rambling, and my answer might ramble a little bit, but when I get a clear question and can think about it, I can certainly give you a more direct answer and you can have it forever as long as you save that email. So, and we have a team behind that, supporting that, but Caroline is the frontlines for question and answer. 

Jenny: Great. Well, I think that we’ve done a nice job talking a little bit about the benefits of the Camps program, and telling the URMIAmatters listeners just a little bit more about it. I’d encourage everybody to go online and look at the coverage, read the FAQs and reach out to AJ and Caroline for them to answer any questions you might have, and thanks AJ for being my guest today and providing this great product for the URMIA membership, and protecting higher education. Thank you.

AJ: It’s been my pleasure, great to work with URMIA, as always. 

Jenny: Ok, well I think that is going to be a wrap on URMIAmatters today. Thank you for listening.